Invercargill career firefighters were gearing up for their 10th industrial strike this Friday, but it has been called off by the NZPFU as events start to unfold in the North Island.
Last week politicians took to social media to slam those striking in Auckland when fires broke out, but the public were supportive.
“The guys are getting a wee bit over it, but the support after the fire has buoyed them on," Southern union representative Aaron Ramsey said.
Since striking action began nationwide, the number of southern career firefighters involved in has continued to stay at around 40.
“We’ve had so much tooting - people are knowing what day of the week it is, just because of our striking.”
FENZ received 11 callouts of incidents at its last strike on January 16, including one to Invercargill Central which ended up being a false alarm.
But Aaron said it still required a crew of three to respond, which they didn’t have as they were all standing on the street corner, so volunteers from Wallacetown and Bluff attended instead.
“It’s not something we enjoy doing, but we just need to start doing something with that support.”
Deputy national commander Megan Stiffler thanked volunteers for their extra care during the last strike, and said after the fire FENZ reached out to NZPFU officials to agree on a process for responding to emergency events in the future.
"Our aim was to put arrangements in place to mitigate the risk to public safety during strikes, while preserving NZPFU members’ right to take industrial action,” she said.
"This would cover potential loss of life, when fires are likely to spread, and the need for specialist equipment.
Aaron said the reallocation of fire trucks around the country would soon begin, having a huge impact on Invercargill, as some of the better equipment was sent to bigger centres.
“We have a reasonable fleet right now, but there will be breakdowns and that will affect our response times.”
He said if facilitation wasn’t successful, the Invercargill crew had some other plans up its sleeve to ramp up strike action.